A-Infos (en) German Firms Count Cost of Rising Sabotage

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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            GERMAN FIRMS COUNT COST OF RISING SABOTAGE
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     THE TIMES: FOREIGN NEWS
     TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 1998
     http://www.sunday-times.com.co.uk/
 
     Vandalism and theft by frustrated staff are everyday
     realities, writes Roger Boyes
 
     GERMAN security experts gave a warning yesterday of a new
wave of Luddite-style sabotage in the country's factories. Arson,
vandalism, computer theft, product poisoning and outright
sabotage have become part of the everyday reality of the economy.
 
     Heike Denzer, director of one of Germany's top industrial
security companies, yesterday gave the example of cable-cutting
on poorly protected building sites.
 
     A computer centre, about to take up its work, was paralysed
when somebody severed main cables; the company lost millions of
pounds of contracts because of the delay. The culprit, it
emerged, was somebody working for a supplier which was unable to
meet tight delivery deadlines.
 
     As pressure grows on German manufacturers to become more
competitive, there has been increasing recourse to industrial
espionage and sabotage. Thousands of circuit boards are stolen
every year. A German consortium competing for large Korean
contracts was outbid by a rival that had intercepted its faxes.
 
     Michael Schnell, who advises insurance companies, said that
in the early 1980s arson accounted for 9 per cent of industrial
damage covered by insurance terms. "Now arson makes up between a
quarter and a fifth of total damage in German industry," he told
the daily Handelsblatt, which published a special investigation
into company sabotage. Apart from the fire damage directly
attributable to arson, some of the 15 per cent of uninvestigated
fire damage was almost certainly malicious.
 
     Police registered 140 cases in 1996 of Germans trying to
poison food products on supermarket shelves, with the aim of
blackmailing the manufacturer or the supermarket chain. Ten years
ago, only 35 cases were known to the police. Such blackmail is
now costing companies millions in product withdrawal and loss of
market share.
 
     The most disturbing phenomenon, however, is the rise in
serious vandalism, which is reflecting something of the anti-
technological resentment that is simmering in German factories.
Rainer von zur Muhlen, publisher of a security newsletter, cites
the example of a large engineering manufacturer. In 1975, the
cases of vandalism that were recorded totalled 116; by 1995, the
company was having to deal with 396 cases. Lists were destroyed
and oil pipes deliberately weakened.
 
     The factory's security chief managed to track down 17
culprits and, with management approval, offered them immunity if
they saw a psychiatrist. "They exhibited an intense hostility to
technology which was almost schizophrenic in character," Herr von
zur Muhlen told Handelsblatt. "Their attitude seemed to be, 'If I
cannot own these cars, then nobody can'."
 
     A man who had disrupted the work of the factory for three
hours, with a single heavy hammer blow on a critical pipe, spoke
of a "feeling of omnipotence".
 
     All the vandals - from senior management to temporary manual
labourers - reported frustration and unhappiness with bosses,
their colleagues and their pay packets. The underlying element,
however, is almost certainly the fear of unemployment. Figures to
be released this week will show the German jobless total edging
quickly towards five million.
 
     The low morale has infected the retail trade. The
Association of German Retailers reported yesterday that the
turn-of-year inventories had revealed a shortfall of 3 billion of
goods, 1 per cent of total turnover, which disappeared into the
hands of shoplifters. A very large proportion of this theft was
carried out by employees.
 
     Typically, goods from big do-it-yourself centres are removed
during the day to an outlying shed on the premises and then
picked up at night.
 
     In Saxony, however, police are reporting ram-raiding.
Romanian gangs have taken to stealing lorries and crashing them
backwards into shop windows.
 
     The gang members are so well trained that they can load a
lorry in three minutes and escape well before the police arrive.
 
     Copyright 1998 The Times Newspapers Limited.
 
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